In the interest of “common ground,” we could see a proposal like increasing cost sharing in Medicare. It would be astounding for Democrats to do so, coming off of a successful effort to blame Republicans for… increasing cost sharing in Medicare, by ending the program and giving seniors a too-small coupon to purchase health insurance.

A new investigative piece by The Nation exposes the pre-election activities at Koch Industries, which instructed its 50,000 employees who to vote for and why in an election packet full of right-wing propaganda. The packet (they were mailed to employees in all states; the linked example is the one from Washington state) included Koch-endorsed and Koch-PAC supported candidates for election, almost all of them Republicans, and an editorial from Charles Koch himself stressing the importance of pro-business candidates in 2010.

Republicans are about to unveil a budget that privatizes Medicare. It ends enrollment to the single-payer program entirely within 10 years, and everybody else who reaches the age of 65 gets a voucher they can use to purchase health insurance on the private market. The voucher’s value does not increase over time even as health insurance rates rise, so it will cover less and less of the cost of insurance. These Medicare-certified private plans, ironically, would live on an exchange, much like the private market in the Affordable Care Act. But two things here: one, the Medicare certification would have no standards like essential benefits, annual limits and minimum guarantees, unlike the vision for insurance exchanges in the ACA; and two, this would cost more money overall, since Medicare is much cheaper than private insurance, similar to all single-payer health care systems. The burden of that additional cost would fall on the individual, as the voucher would stretch less over time.

We have a sick economy, a looming lost decade, millions of people out of work and millions more fighting to keep their home. There doesn’t seem to be a way to combat that legislatively until 2013 now at the earliest, and that really won’t be good enough for our competitiveness in the world.

None of these exit polls really portend a very good night for the Democrats. About the only thing they can hang their hats on: voters do not want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, by a count of 47-41.

I love speculating on turnout. But it’s more like trainspotting than anything, a hobby and not rigorous electoral analysis.

The losses were baked into the cake in 2009, particularly by the closely-watched process on the health care bill, which validated conservative claims and which happened while unemployment shot up. That was basically the moment Democrats lost touch with independents.

This is part of a larger question in the progressive community over whether to share stages with the likes of Breitbart, or whether to appear on Fox News, or what have you. Some argue that they should not allow the lies of a Brietbart or a Fox to go unchecked, and that progressive voices have to be heard in those venues. Others think that no progressive should de facto legitimize a Breitbart or a Fox News. This was the argument behind the ultimately successful boycott by Democratic candidates of a 2008 Fox News Presidential primary debate.

I think the debate gets a little too intense sometimes, but in this case, with ABC dealing with their own self-inflicted drowning, I would see no reason to hand them a lifeline and a way out of it. Let them have their little Breitbart show, and I will enjoy checking the ratings the day afterwards.

The pre-post-mortem of this election season has to include something that Democrats should have known the day after the 2008 election – that coalition they built to give the Presidency to Barack Obama does not typically turn out in a midterm. This fundamental problem – a coalition that is necessarily smaller in a non-Presidential year – speaks to almost the entire problem Democrats will have at the polls tomorrow.

Yet another example, similar to the head-stomping by a Rand Paul supporter, of how violence has crept into this election season. This time, law enforcement did the honors.